BBICC 2013 brand identity design by 44degrees

Created by Srecko Dimitrijevic and Dusan Avramovic, the BBICC brand identity design is one of those projects that sparks questions and curiosity.

To be honest, what spark my curiosity was the color. I was curious about the usage of all that purple. I kept seeing purple on projects that target a more feminine audience. Besides this, the symbol and the print work really indulged my eyes. Because of this, I approached the guys from 44degrees to find out more about BBICC.

What is BBICC?
Belgrade Business International Case Competition 2013 (BBICC 2013) is the first global undergraduate business case competition that was held in Belgrade, the capital city of Serbia. BBICC was a unique opportunity for international business schools to participate in the first Southeastern Europe case study competition. BBICC were taking place during the spring of 2013, from 2nd – 7th of April.
Serbia (Faculty of Organizational Science) was honored to host 12 teams from all around the world.

“However, BBICC 2013 will be the very first global competition organized by the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, in cooperation with the Center for Business Case Study. This competition will gather 12 respected universities from all around the world. Our vision is to become a well-known and appreciated competition in Eastern Europe, and even beyond. Moreover, during this event, we shall do our best to present Belgrade in the best possible way.”

What was the problem that you solved?
Having in mind that the competition was being held in our city and our country, we’ve had all the freedom to design as we like, foremost, because of the good cooperation with BBICC team, who had absolute confidence in us. Our idea was to make a potent visual identity, which would leave a strong impression on competitors and on all other participants, thus expressing our capabilities as serious organizers and the fact that the actual competition deserves to “live” in the future and gather even more participants (which was also accomplished!).

Who is the target market? What about the audience?
Target groups were, foremost, pupils and students from reputable universities from 12 different countries around the world – mostly young, aspiring people. Our desire was to make a design that will set aside itself from direct national motives, but also from business style identities, which was the case with previous competitions. We wanted to present a design that will additionally inspire the uniqueness of the competition, rooting itself only in the logo and its visual transposition.

What is the strategy behind the design?
As we’ve mentioned earlier, to create a strong visual identity that will improve the appearance of the competition, in a best possible way. Our way of thinking guided us to create something that can be recognizable for the next year also, but, leaving enough creative space to do something different, a kind of variation of this year’s design.

Could you describe the design process for the symbol?
The brief stated that designers can have total creative freedom. BBICC officials informed us about the character of the competition, and their only guideline was to make a logo that will have some kind of connection with the very nature of the competition – which is a Case Study solution. Competitors receive actual business problem of the company, which they need to solve in a best possible way.
We’ve made a few sketches, mostly with infographics, graphs, statistics, chart pies and similar symbols, and finally we came up to the desired logo – in it’s core it is also a chart-pie, but we replaced the circle with hexagon, mostly because of the triangles within, that seemed as a very good base for visual development.

What can you tell us about the typography and color?
Concerning the choice of the color, we didn’t had any special system, and we just choosed the color that seemed strong and pleasant enough, always having in mind that we’ve wanted to move ourselves from direct national or any other recognizable color motives.
Since it was the first edition of the competition, our desire was to use a new font, which would give a different kind of flare to the BBICC typography. Metric font is just beautiful, so after a brief thinking, we’ve opted for it. It may be important to emphasize that, even in the treatment of typography, we’ve tried to be consistent (headlines in caps lock, combination of light and semibold weight of Metric font), which added to the overall impression.

Why do you show the transposition on the printed materials? What is its role?
By adding a logo transposition showcase in the presentation of this project, we’ve wanted to explain our core idea – simple, basic design of the logo form can be used for more complex visuals, which gives it additional visual strength and opens a possibility to develop it in many ways. We’ve used different logo transposition, either as dispersed triangles (3D) or as a simple graphics, and always maintained visual coherence, which is great. Our consistency was later fruitfully used on various prints, but also for branding materials on the actual event.

Tell me about you and 44 degrees?
44degrees is the name under which we work together as a team (Srecko Dimitrijevic and Dusan Avramovic). We’ve known each other for many years and in design we have similar views and aspirations. You can follow us and our work on Behance and on Facebook.

I am a web and graphic designer, with a background in marketing, interested in visual communication and more.
I created wabbaly.com to share my point of view on this visual world. You can keep up with me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.